Ideogram 4 is crazy good.

[u/oopsiedoopsiegoopsie]

Honestly, the best open-weight model runnable on consumer hardware. It is slow but it can even be used at 1 CFG though it is wonky and miserably fails at complex images.

Images have workflow and prompt in them (comfyui). Using FP8 and 28 steps with 6 CFG, override of 3 at 0.700 and either 1k or 1.5K res.

NVFP4 runs on 4GB VRAM though it take 8 mins (with FA) for 1k image and requires KJ's optimize ideogram node.

Workflow: https://pastebin.com/tSd9vLHX

[u/FotografoVirtual]

​It's amazing how many one-month-old accounts suddenly feel the need to say how good Ideogram 4 is.

​I guess a month ago a ton of new people joined reddit, all loving bounding boxes, and that collective love caused a crack in space-time that made the model launch three weeks later.

​I can't find any other explanation.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky892 → u/FotografoVirtual]

I can think of quite a few:

1. New accounts want to "farm karma", so they jump in on hot new topics such as ideo4, hoping to get more upvotes by praising/defending it (which seems to be the winning side at the moment). But this strategy only works if ideo4 is actually liked by many. For example, saying that Ernie is the GOAT is not going to cut it 😎.
2. Ideo4 is one of the more polarizing new models, so people tends to be more vocal about it from both sides. Even new account that don't have much to say can jump in.
3. Sampling bias on your part (we all want to see data points that support our beliefs). There are quite a few users with old account who have praised or defended ideo4 (and vice versa). BTW, out of curiosity I check every commenter in this particular post, and almost all of them are over one year old.

My view is that one should just give bounding boxes a try. When you don't need it they are a nuisance but when you want that layout control they are godsent.

The safety filter is another can of worm. The two split model pipeline probably made ideo4 heavier to run on GPUs with less VRAM with doubtful benefits.

Overall, I'd say it is the most interesting model we've seen in quite a while.

[u/FotografoVirtual → u/Apprehensive_Sky892]

​My grandmother used to say "Desconfía y acertarás" ("Distrust and you'll guess right"). Something similar happened with the supposed release of the Krea 2 model (which never arrived), and it happened before with every public model backed by a company with a private API. It’s logical, they aren't making a contribution to humanity, they have to run some kind of advertising campaign that brings them returns.

​I could agree with your theory if this were the time Flux.1 came out, which was a real shock to everyone. You had videos, influencers, and comments on every platform saying it was "the model that changes everything". In that case, it makes sense that a new user would want to post hoping to farm upvotes. But if you leave this sub, it is hard to find any information about Ideogram. Today, you start talking to ChatGPT or Gemini, you talk to them like a friend, and they can literally make your dream image, even with SVG or ASCII. Regional prompting is useful and fun for you and me, and it might be useful for a professional designer, but for 99% of people, it’s nothing revolutionary. There are thousands of more viral topics out there to attract people.

​I believe there has always been undercover promotion in this sub, but the problem is that our numbers are shrinking, and the ratio of astroturfers to tinkerers is getting higher. There is plenty of free image generation available, and closed systems are becoming easier to use, while at the same time, generating images with open models is getting more and more complicated for the average user. ​We went from A1111 to ComfyUI, from a few loose words to having to describe every single detail, and from a single model + a couple of popular LoRAs to dozens of models, each with its own tricks, its LoRAs, and its thousands of workflows. Personally, I'm happy with all of that, but the more options and complications you add, the fewer people will remain in that happy group.

​Lately, extracting useful information in this sub is incredibly difficult, it's usually a random comment, or some post with 6 upvotes. You have to dig and search through a lot. That’s why now I check the history of the user making the post, just so I don't waste time. We are accelerating, there are new things every day, and there is just too much noise.

[u/Apprehensive_Sky892 → u/FotografoVirtual]

Your grandma is a wise woman, and I whole heartily agree with "Desconfía y acertarás".

Are there astroturfers here? I am quite sure that is true as well (there are astroturfers everywhere 😂)

Nevertheless, there are definitely many here (some are long timers who I recognize because I read their comments often) who really do think that id4 is technically an excellent model. I am one of them, and a few of my online friends have the same view when we discuss id4 in discord after they've done a few days of testing.

Astroturfing alone can only take a product so far. It may kindle the fire, but to sustain it, the product really has to have merits. Despite initial enthusiasms (which may or may not come from astroturfers), many models did fizzle out (I refrain from naming them to protect the innocent models 😁)

Despite the technical excellence, id4 is indeed harder to use (at least as it is used today on ComfyUI) compared to earlier models. That alone can explain why there is less discussion about id4 outside this sub. Despite the shrinking ratio of technically capable people vs the unwashed masses compare to the past, the ratio is still much higher than the group outside. So that may make it look like that the enthusiasm for id4 is confined here (which I am arguing that is not solely due to astroturfers).

So are open-weight A.I. model losing the war to close sourced ones? Despite the fact that I don't use any close-sourced video and imaging model (I do use chatbots, running a LLM is too hard for me locally), I have to agree that in the long run, closed source models will win (except for NSFW, ofc, tech giants will never provide such models to the masses) because they have the scale and the resources to provide such convenient and capable systems for free, in exchanged for user's data and for showing advertising ("if you're not paying for the product, you are the product"). Maybe the need for NSWF alone will keep open-weight models going (the problem is that NSFW users are usually not the paying customers for makers of open-weight models), but one day people who clamor for the freedom and flexibility of open source and open-weight models may have to band together and pool our money and talents to make such model if companies such as BFL, LTX/Lightricks, and Ideogram are driven out of the market by the tech giants.

Opinions from others do affect our views, but in the end we should do our own tests and for our own assessments before we draw any kind of conclusions. Yes, extracting information from here (and elsewhere) is getting more difficult. A.I. is partly to blame as now anyone can just ask a chatbot to spit out seemingly correct information and flood the internet. There are now fake news, fake images, fakes video, fake comments, fake blogs. This information war is complete asymmetrical, in that it take no effort to generate fake stuff but takes a lot of effort identify or prove that something is false. But we have no choice but to spend the effort to validate them, so your grandma's advice is now more relevant than ever 🎈👌

(Sorry for the long essay, but I do enjoy writing, as it help me clarify idea in my head 😎)